UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON | DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

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UH CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENT SUCCESS

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UH Department of CEE’s 2010 Concrete Canoe Team

As part of the annual Beyer Lecture Series, CEE welcomed both William F. Marcuson III and Mauro Ferrari last fall. Marcuson is Director Emeritus of the Geotechnical Laboratory in Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Miss. He received his bachelor of science in civil engineering from the Citadel in 1963, master of science in civil engineering from Michigan State University in 1964, and doctor of philosophy in civil engineering from North Carolina State University in 1970. He was president of the American Society of Civil Engi-neers (ASCE) in 2007 and is one of the nation’s leading civil engineers. He has received five national awards from ASCE, including the Norman Medal, civil engineering’s oldest honor. In 1995, he was honored by the National Society of Professional Engineers as Federal Engineer of the Year. His lecture was titled The New Orleans Levees, the Worst Engineering Catastrophe in U.S. History – What Went Wrong and Why?

Ferrari is the Ernest Cockrel Jr. Distinguished Endowed Chair of the Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston. He also serves as President, CEO and Director of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, professor of experimental Therapeutics at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, profes-sor of bioengineering at Rice University, and president of The Alliance for Nano-Health. He is a founder of biomedical nano/micro-technology, especially in their applications to drug delivery, cell transplantation, implantable bioreactors and other innovative therapeutic modalities. In these fields, he has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and six books. His lecture was titled The Civil Engineering of Cancer Nanomedicine.

At the 2011 American Concrete Institute Annual Convention, two UH civil engineering professors received high honors and one of UH’s ACI student chapter teams captured third place in the FRP Composites Competition.

Professor and Department Chair Abdeldjelil “DJ” Belarbi received the Joe W. Kelly Award, an international award given to distinguished individuals to recognize outstanding contributions in education relat-ing to the broad field of concrete. Belarbi was recognized at the ACI annual award ceremony in Tampa, Fla. and in an article published in the Concrete International magazine.

In addition, Professor Thomas Hsu was recognized as a member of the institute for 50 years, and the University of Houston’s ACI stu-dent chapter also received recognition for capturing a third place finish in the international FRP Composites Competition.

3 Department News

4 Research News

6 Faculty News

8 Student News

10 Alumni News

14 Donor Roll Call

15 Department Info

contents

DEPARTMENT NEWS

Abdeldjelil “DJ” Belarbi

Chair, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering

William F. Marcuson III

Mauro Ferrari

2010 Beyer Lecture Series

ACI Convention Honors

Chair’s Message

Professor Leads Nuclear Infrastructure Conference

Dear CEE Alumni and Friends,

Welcome to our Blueprint newsletter. Great things are happening at UH, and I would like to share some developments in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) department.

In January 2011, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognized UH as a Tier One University having “very high research activity.” More recently, the Princeton Review chose UH as one of America’s Best Colleges. In fall 2010, the National Research Council ranked CEE in the top 50 percent out of 130 Ph.D. programs. Additionally, the department placed in the top 30 percent of the country in the NRC’s research activity measure. This is the result of the hard work of our faculty, students, staff and alumni.

Despite the challenges around the country, CEE is expanding. In the last year, we added seven faculty and expect four more in Fall 2011. This almost doubled the size of the department within two years. We are happy to welcome our newest faculty: Drs. Dawood, Glennie, Herman, Rodriguez, Shrestha, Veletsos and Willam. Simultaneously, we said good-bye to Dr. Dennis Clifford who retired in Fall 2010.

As part of our growth strategy, we continue improving our programs by raising standards. Our faculty have been developing a set of goals and action plans for the next five to ten years to build stronger un-dergraduate and graduate programs, increase research productivity, and lead interdisciplinary research in natural hazard mitigation and sustainable functioning of engineered and natural systems, infrastructure preservation, climate change, environmental qual-ity, energy, and natural resources protection. In response to these challenges, we are expanding our horizons and have added talented faculty in computational mechanics, material science/engineering, geosensing, and microbiology and molecular genetics.

In this issue, we invite you to read about our research, new faculty and the expertise they bring with them, the success of our students, and last but not least, the headlines our accomplished alumni are making. In fact, the CEE department established an “academy” to recognize these prominent alums, the details of which are included in this newsletter.

I appreciate the opportunity to serve as chair of this fine depart-ment. We are always happy to hear and share updates from you and appreciate your support.

The tsunami and resulting nuclear crisis in Japan has brought renewed attention to the importance of nuclear power plant infrastructure. Thomas Hsu, Moores Professor of Civil Engineering at the Cullen College, organized and chaired the first Interna-tional Workshop on Infrastructure Systems for Nu-clear Energy, held in Taipei, Taiwan, last December. The workshop covered the latest developments in the design and materials used in those structures intended to prevent radioactive pollution leaks, as well as those used to store nuclear waste.

Presenters hailed from the United States, Asia and Europe and included Hsu, Professor Kaspar Willam, Associate Professor Ashraf Ayoub, and Professor Yi-Lung Mo. The proceedings of the conference are being published by Elsevier Publishing Company.

blueprint is published biannually by the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering, Office of Communications.

Director Publication Coordinator Lindsay Lewis Laura Christian

Editor Graphic Designer Toby Weber Andy Rich

Photographers Cover Photo Thomas Shea Thomas Shea Mark Lacy

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering N107 Engineering Building 1 Houston, TX 77204-4003

Phone 713.743.4250 Email lchristian@uh.edu Website www.egr.uh.edu/cive

Those wishing to reprint articles or photographs should contact the editor. Use the credit line: Reprinted with permission of the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering. Clippings are appreciated.

The University of Houston is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action institution. Minorities, women, veterans and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

University of Houston | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 32 blueprint

Last year, the National Science Foundation-funded National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) moved to the University of Houston. The center’s director, Ramesh Shrestha, a Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, brought NCALM to UH from the University of Florida.

Focused on airborne laser swath mapping and ground-based scanning laser technology research, the center has helped arm earth scientists across the country with detailed information on everything from beach erosion and landslides to drainage patterns and faults.

NCALM researchers are exploring the possibility of using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to map everything from glacial movements to the migration of penguin colonies in Antarctica.

Using the technology, researchers take measurements of the ground’s sur-face from their Cessna 337 Skymaster airplane. From roughly 2,000 feet, this remote technology measures properties of scattered light through the use of laser pulses. Thousands of small cone-shaped pulses travel through a hole in the bottom of the plane to the ground below. A unique detector picks up rays reflected from the ground. Then, each point’s distance is determined by measuring the time delay between the transmission of a pulse and the detection of reflected signals.

In coming years, the UH group plans to develop a next generation LiDAR system. The unit, less expensive than commercially available systems, would allow for some of the most accurate, highest resolution observations possible in laser mapping.

When concrete on a bridge or building deteriorates, cracks or is weakened, the structure doesn’t need to be torn down and replaced. Instead, it can be repaired and strengthened with advanced materials such as carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) that are more than five-times stronger than steel when placed under tension.

While cheaper than constructing a whole new bridge, a single such repair can easily cost hundreds of dollars once equipment handling, materials, labor and other expenses are added up. Multiply that by the hundreds or even thousands of repairs that a single city or state may perform each year, and even these inexpensive fixes can put a dent in any budget.

That’s why repairing concrete in our deteriorated and ageing infrastructure remains a challenge and a topic of continu-ous research. “We understand how the concrete behaves and how the carbon fiber material by itself behaves. But when you combine the two of them, nobody has a good idea about how they interact, glue to each other, and form a composite system,” said Ashraf Ayoub, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

This interaction between concrete and CFRP sheets is the subject of a research project being conducted by Ayoub and CEE Chairman Abdeldjelil “DJ” Belarbi that recently won a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Shankar Chellam, professor of civil and environ-mental engineering, recently received a grant from the Texas Air Research Center to find the pollution “fingerprint” of gasoline-driven vehicles.

Chellam is able conduct this research thanks to the Washburn Tunnel, Texas’ only operational under-water vehicle tunnel and hence an ideal location for this investigation. “If we sample the air in this tunnel, the chances of other sources of pollution impacting our sample are very, very slim. Whatever we measure can be directly attributed to the vehicles that go through the tunnel,” he said.

The first step of this process involves perfect-ing methods of measuring the metals emitted by automobiles. Working with post-doctoral researcher Suresh Kannan Danadurai and doctoral student Nick Spada, Chellam will first work to extract from particulate matter samples, metals such as platinum, palladium, vanadium, chromium, zinc, copper, barium, antimony and lead. The research team will then refine ways of measuring these metals in very low concentrations using instrumentation based on inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry.

Chellam anticipates that this phase of the research will take roughly one year.

Afterwards, in cooperation with local and state officials and Professor Matt Fraser, a researcher from Arizona State University, Chellam will place air samplers in the tunnel to measure particulate matter emissions. Since the tunnel is closed to diesel-driven semi trucks, this project will offer the fingerprint of gasoline-powered vehicles only, with few exceptions.

By measuring pollution produced by thousands of cars over hours and even days at a time, Chellam will be able to determine the real-world make-up of the airborne particulate matter pollution arising from gasoline-driven vehicles.

While the immediate goal of this research is simply to identify the chemical fingerprint of automobile exhaust, Chellam hopes that his work ultimately will be used to make life in cities, and elsewhere, more livable. “What we hope is that by commu-nicating our findings, there may be some environ-mental policy decisions made based on our research and similar work that others are doing,” he said.

Mina Dawood, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, received a three-year, $300,000 grant from National Science Foundation to develop a new method of repairing cracks in steel structures.

Dawood’s approach is to mix fiber-reinforced polymers with shape-memory alloys to form a patch that compresses the crack tip, like a bandage pulled tightly over a cut. In doing so, such patches would dramatically slow or even eliminate the propagation of the crack.

While the fiber-reinforced polymers will give the patches strength, this ‘pre-stressing’ effect will be achieved through the use of shape-memory alloys, which can be manipulated at the molecular level to take on a specific shape when, for example, they are heated to a certain temperature.

In real-world applications, Dawood said a patch would likely be designed and fabricated offsite and then taken to the repair location. A repair crew

would then cover the crack with the patch, which would be held in place with a structural adhesive. When the adhesive bonding is complete, the patch would be heated with a localized heat source as simple as a hair dryer. That heating would cause the patch to contract, pulling the two sides of the crack closer together.

In addition to being more reliable, this approach is also easier to implement than existing repair methods, noted Dawood. “You can imagine weld-ing steel plates on the bottom of a bridge is not an easy task. It’s disruptive, it requires a lot of heavy machinery and it can’t be done quickly. These patches can be applied more quickly with less equipment and fewer workers.”

Dawood has two primary collaborators on this project at the Cullen College: Kaspar Willam, professor of civil and environmental engineer-ing and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and Gangbing Song, professor of mechanical engineering.

NSF National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping Moves to UH

Professors Win Grant to Study Concrete Strengthening and Repair

Researcher Working to Quantify Real-World Impact of Automobiles

Professor Developing Patch for Repairing Cracked Steel

Ramesh Shrestha

Ashraf Ayoub Abdeldjelil “DJ” Belarbi

Shankar Chellam

Mina Dawood

RESEARCH NEWS

photo by Thomas Shea

4 blueprint University of Houston | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 5

FACULTY NEWS

On December 4, 2010, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering honored a very special faculty member: Dr. Dennis Clifford.

He obtained a master’s degree in environmental engineering and chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan. He then began teaching at the University of Houston in 1976.

While a faculty member at UH, Dr. Clifford held the Thomas and Laura Hsu Professorship in Engineer-ing. He is an internationally known scholar in water treatment and ion exchange, an exemplary teacher, and an unselfish contributor to the department, college, university and his profession. Dr. Clifford was twice named as one of the college’s outstanding teachers, and in 2005, he received the Cullen College of Engineering Career Teaching Award for “excellence in teaching and service to the students of the college.” He has graduated 10 Ph.D.s and 27 master’s students.

During his tenure at UH, Dr. Clifford obtained over $5.3 million (his share) of outside funding. He has more than 150 publications including 53 refereed journal papers, 23 peer-reviewed reports, 60 confer-

ence proceedings, nine book chapters and nine invited papers. He is a co-inventor on five patents related to water analysis and treatment. He has won numerous research and publication awards includ-ing the Sigma Xi Research Award, the Halliburton Senior Research Award, the Fluor Daniel Faculty Excellence Award and the Abraham E. Dukler Dis-tinguished Faculty Award from the UH Engineering Alumni Association.

Dr. Clifford’s service to the university has been ex-emplary. He directed the Environmental Engineer-ing Graduate Program for 14 years and the Environ-mental Engineering Lab for 16 years. In addition to serving as chair of the department, Dr. Clifford has been a member or chair of numerous department, college, university and professional committees.

Due to his dedication, Dr. Clifford has earned emeritus status at the university. The emeritus title is conferred only upon retired tenured faculty who have made a significant contribution to the uni-versity through a long and distinguished record of scholarship, teaching and/or service. In addition, an endowed scholarship has been created in the depart-ment in his honor.

Craig Glennie joins CEE from Ter-raPoint USA Inc., a LiDAR remote sensing company, where he was vice president of engineering. He received a Ph.D. and B.Sc. in geomatics engineering from the University of Calgary, Alberta in 1999 and 1996, respectively, and is a registered profes-sional engineer. Prior to his role as vice president at TerraPoint, he served as senior geodetic engineer and manager of U.S. operations. At UH, he will work as part of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping and the proposed graduate program in geo-sensing systems engineering.

Reagan Herman joins CEE from Johns Hopkins University, where she served as senior lecturer and assistant research professor. Prior to her ap-pointment at John’s Hopkins, she was an assistant professor of civil engineer-ing at UH. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in structural engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2001 and 1995, respectively. Her research interests focus on the design and behavior of steel structures, with an emphasis on steel bridge design. Her research work has included studies of various aspects of steel trapezoidal box girder bridge design and behavior.

Debora Rodrigues joins CEE from Yale University, where she was a post-doctoral researcher in the environmen-tal engineering program within the department of chemical engineering. She received a Ph.D. in microbiology and molecular genetics from Michi-gan State University in 2007. Her research focuses on microbiological processes in the environment. She is currently investigating the toxic effects of nanomaterials on microorganisms from aquatic systems and the role of biofilms in corrosion.

Abdeldjelil “DJ” Belarbi received the Joe W. Kelly Award from American Con-crete Institute. Also, a graduate scholarship was named for him by the Missouri ACI chapter for his many years of service as an officer of the ACI-MO Board of Directors and for establishing several student schol-arships in the Missouri-Western Illinois ACI Chapter.

Reagan Herman received the 2010 American Society of Civil Engineers’ Mois-seff Award with co-authors Yura, Helwig, and Zhou.

Mohammed Mansour won an Out-standing Lecturer Award from the UH Cullen College of Engineering.

William Rixey received a $75,000 grant from the American Petroleum Institute to explore the impacts of various ethanol fuel blends on a pilot-scale aquifer. He also won a $23,000 grant to explore subsurface multiphase flow characteristics of bioalco-hol fuels and groundwater quality from the Texas Hazardous Waste Research Center.

Jerry Rogers will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Environmen-tal and Water Resources Institute in May. He also will receive the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2011 Civil Engineering History and Heritage Award this October. His paper titled “The New Town of Boul-der City: City Planning and Infrastructure Engineering for Hoover Dam Workers” was

one of 20 papers selected nationally for in-clusion in the proceedings of a special sym-posium to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Hoover Dam at the American Society of Civil Engineers annual conference.

Kyle Strom won an Outstanding Teach-ing Award from the UH Cullen College of Engineering.

Cumaraswamy “Vipu” Vipulanandan won the 2011 Most Valuable Professional award from the Underground Construction Technology Association and Underground Construction magazine for his outstanding contributions in education and research related to underground infrastructure construction and maintenance.

Two new faculty members who belong to the National Academy of Engineering have joined the department.

Kaspar Willam (left), professor of civil and environmental engineering, joined CEE last fall from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Inducted into the NAE in 2004, he has authored more than 160 publications and served as an invited speaker on more than 140 occasions. Willam, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, is also a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Me-chanical Engineers and the United States Association for Computational Mechanics. He is recognized as a leading authority on structural mechanics and materials, and a recipient of the Nathan M. Newmark Medal of ASCE.

Anestis “Andy” Veletsos (right) joined CEE as an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering. He is also the Brown & Root Emeritus Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Rice University. Veletsos is a two-time winner of the Norman Medal, the highest award given by the American Society of Civil Engineers for papers published in its jour-nals. He headed the group that formulated the Applied Technology Council’s first design provi-sions for soil structure and then incorporated those provisions into the federal government’s National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Veletsos’ areas of expertise include structural and foundation dynamics, earthquake engineering and the dynamics of offshore platforms.

CEE Honors Longtime Faculty, Dr. Dennis Clifford New Faculty

AccoladesDepartment Adds Two NAE Members

Dennis Clifford Craig Glennie Assistant Professor

Reagan Herman Instructional Associate Professor, Research Associate Professor

Debora Rodrigues Assistant Professor

photo by Thomas Shea

6 blueprint University of Houston | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 7

Civil engineering graduate student Taraka Ravi Shankar Mullapudi won a fellowship last fall to re-search an underused method of distributing the load of a structure in soil.

Mullapudi won the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Trent R. Dames and William W. Moore Fellowship, an award available to graduate students, professors and practicing engineers. Winners are selected based on the technical and social value of their research and its potential to advance the science and profession of engineering. While past awards have been in the $2,000 to $6,000 range, Mullapudi’s fellowship award totals $10,000.

Studying under the guidance of Prof. Ashraf Ayoub, he will use this funding to examine the interaction of inelastic soil structure behavior.

“Soil can resist loads proportional to its normal dis-placement at a particular point, which is what most structures rely on,” Mullapudi said. “But it can also resist bending because of the cohesive nature of the soil, and usually this bending resistance is neglected. We are investigating and numerically simulating that interaction.”

Better understanding the interplay between tension-less soil and a load that is applied on structural com-ponents will allow architects and engineers to design structures (such as buildings and bridges) that more efficiently and effectively distribute their weight, Mullapudi said. When his research is complete, ide-ally his findings will be incorporated into structural design computer software.

More recently, Mullapudi won the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s 2011 Student Paper Competition at its 63rd Annual Meeting, held in La Jolla, Calif. His paper titled “Seismic Behavior of RC Structures Subjected to Combined Loading Including Torsion” explores the behavior during earthquakes of reinforced concrete members with eccentric loadings, asymmetrical geometries, and skewed and curved geometries with unequal spans and column heights. In seismic events, these concrete members are subjected to multiple combined loads, including axial, flexure, shear and torsion loads.

Mullapudi has developed an analytical model “to predict the behavior of structures under such loads, as well design them to resist against destructive earthquakes,” he said.

The Cullen College of Engineering’s Outstanding Sen-ior for the 2010-2011 academic year is Jennifer Ngo. Ngo, who came to UH on a full academic scholarship, graduated with a B.S. in civil engineering in Decem-ber of 2010 with a final grade point average of 3.71.

During her time at UH, Ngo was active in the life of the college. She served as treasurer of the UH chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers for two years, organizing and/or participating in events like the IEEE Chili Cook-off, its Habitat for Humanity volun-teer efforts, and the group’s semester kickoff parties.

Ngo was also a three-time member of the college’s Concrete Canoe team. “I’m really active physically, and I like to do outdoorsy stuff, so this was a natural fit for me,” she said. Two of those teams won the regional Concrete Canoe competition and went on to represent UH at nationals.

In addition to her work with student organizations, Ngo went out of her way to build up her resume while still enrolled as a student. She spent a year as a research assistant on a Texas Department of Trans-portation-funded research project led by Kyle Strom,

an assistant professor of civil and environmental en-gineering. She also completed two internships dur-ing her time at the college. The first was with United States Gypsum, a building materials manufacturer. The second internship, which she landed through the Engineering Career Fair, was with Spectra En-ergy, a natural gas pipeline and infrastructure firm.

After graduating in December, Ngo immediately began a position as a project engineer in the pipeline engineering department with Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, also a natural gas infrastructure company. In this role, she serves as part of a team that evalu-ates and selects the best routes for new pipelines. Once routes are finalized, her team selects a firm to engineer the pipelines themselves, as well as manages the construction process.

Given her academic achievements and clear commit-ment to professional success, it’s not surprising that Ngo is considering pursuing an advanced degree, though one aimed at business rather than the lab. “I want to go back. Probably not for a masters in en-gineering, but for an MBA,” she said. “I’m thinking that I’ll go back about two years down the line.”

The Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers has awarded the 2011 O.H. Ammann Research Fellowship to UH graduate student Rachel Howser. Established in 1963, the Ammann Fellowship is intended to foster the creation of new knowledge in the field of structural design and construction.

The fellowship will support her research titled “De-velopment of Self-Consolidating Carbon Nanofiber Concrete Sensors for Structural Health Monitor-ing,” a project aimed at the development of a carbon nanofiber aggregate (CNFA) that can measure the damage in a concrete structure. “Carbon nanofibers have electrical properties and when you add them to concrete, it gives the concrete electrical properties. Since there is a relationship between the strain of

concrete and its electrical resistance, you can look at its electrical properties to see how badly it has been damaged by an earthquake or some other sort of disaster,” she said. Howser is pursuing this research under the direction of Professors Thomas Hsu and Yi-Lung Mo.

Howser received a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from Rose Hulman Institute of Technology in 2008. She’s been an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, partici-pated in the Research Experiences for Undergradu-ates program at UH, which sparked her interest in graduate studies in the UH CEE department, and pursued a unique post-graduate research opportuni-ty in Taiwan as part of a SF International Research and Education in Engineering (IREE) grant.

For two out of the last three years, the UH Concrete Canoe Team has captured first place at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Texas/Mexico Regional Concrete Ca-noe Competition, earning a spot to compete at the national level each year.

In 2010, students competed against 13 teams at Town Lake in Austin for the title. High rankings in each of the four portions of the competition—an oral presentation, design paper, physical display and five canoe races—earned them top honors in the competition. But it was their concrete mixture—poured to make the 215-pound canoe dubbed Steer Clear—that challenged their engineering minds and made the win attainable.

Their final recipe was applied to a wood-and-Styrofoam hull, which they let cure for 28 days.

“It feels so great to win,” said Jessica Baptista, the team’s captain. “We worked so hard and lost a lot of sleep to make this possible. We literally poured our heart and souls into this and it paid off.”

In total, the students’ estimate more than 1,100 hours was spent on the project. Many after-noons and weekends were spent on surround-ing lakes and bayous bringing their paddling skills up to speed for two female, two male and one co-ed race in the boat. At regionals, they breezed by their competitors—taking first in three of the races and second in the others.

CEE Grad Student Wins Fellowship, Best Paper Award CEE Undergrad Named Outstanding Senior

UH Civil Graduate Student Awarded O.H. Ammann Research Fellowship Concrete Canoe Team Leads Region in 2009-2010

STUDENT NEWS

Taraka Ravi Shankar Mullupudi

Jennifer Ngo

Rachel Howser

photo by Thomas Shea

University of Houston | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 98 blueprint

ALUMNI NEWS

Wayne Klotz (MSCE ’76) received the honor in recognition for his work with Klotz Associates, the civil engineering firm he co-founded, and for his service to the profession as national president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Klotz served as head of ASCE from No-vember 2008 to November 2009. During that period, congress and President Barack Obama debated and crafted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus package.

During this same time, the ASCE was preparing its report card on the state of the nation’s infrastructure. Recognizing an ideal chance to advocate for a much-needed infrastructure investment, Klotz moved up the release of the report card to coincide with the stimulus debate. He soon was giving interviews to media outlets across the country, becoming the de facto spokesman for strengthening the nation’s infrastructure.

While the stimulus bill ended up dedicating less than 10% of its dollars to infrastructure, Klotz said, “the fact remains that it was a huge boost to public aware-ness that the basic infrastructure – water, wastewater drainage, paving, the building blocks of our modern society – need to be taken care of and improved.”

In addition to advocating for infrastructure spending, as ASCE president Klotz also worked to raise awareness of the need for sustainability in civil engineering projects. Sustainability in these efforts means accounting for three main factors in a pro-ject: its economic viability, environmental impact, and effect on the people who live and work near it.

Klotz’ focus on sustainability led to the recent creation of the Institute for Sustain-able Infrastructure, a partnership among the ASCE, the American Council of Engineering Companies and the American Public Works Association. Klotz is cur-rently serving on the board of directors for this new group.

One of the ISI’s first projects is the crea-tion of a rating tool, similar to the United States Green Building Council’s LEED program, to quantify the sustainability of civil engineering undertaking. The ISI and its rating system, Klotz said, “will oversee the sustainability effort for really the whole profession.”

While his efforts on behalf of his the civil engineering profession are impressive, Klotz has also reached great heights with the firm he co-founded in 1985. Klotz Associates works on all elements of public infrastructure, as well as on some commer-cial and industrial projects.

Previous ASCE President, UH Alumnus Named Engineer of the Year

Wayne Klotz

Cullen College alum Alireza Ghodsi, P.E. (MCE ’78), chairman of the board of the international corporation Rigid Global Buildings (formerly Rigid Building), traveled to the Middle East as part of a small U.S. delegation to meet with officials in Afghani-stan about rebuilding the war-torn country.

Invited to participate by Paul Brinkley, a deputy leading a special task force under U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Ghodsi was one of only a handful of success-ful Iranian-American businessmen invited to Afghanistan to discuss how the private sector can help in the rebuilding of the nation.

The trip included tours of Kabul and Herat, Afghanistan, meetings with their respective mayors and city officials and a special sum-mit with General David Petraeus, the com-mander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The discussions involved how to rebuild the country through the wealth of newly-discovered mineral deposits. These discus-sions ultimately resulted in the signing of various Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) outlining the role of the U.S. and private industry in developing a framework for the process.

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering recog-nized the need to honor their prominent alumni by creating The Academy of Distinguished Civil & Environmental Engineers. In 2010, the department, in concert with their Industrial Advi-sory Board, began designing an appropriate and fair method of selecting candidates and forming a self-sustaining group that will continue the legacy. CEE plans to inducted its first members into this select organization in April 2011.

The academy is dedicated to recognizing outstanding alumni who bring honor to the CEE department and have sustained distin-guished contributions to the profession, field, the university, or society at large. Academy members represent an elite group of alums who have achieved greatness all starting with the same set of tools obtained here in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department in the UH Cullen College of Engineering.

When selecting candidates, the academy seeks out alumni who received their degree in civil or environmental engineering from the University of Houston at least twenty years prior to nomination. During those twenty-plus years, each candidate must have become an outstanding engineer practitioner and/or possess recognized expertise in one or more fields of civil or environmental engineer-ing. While promoting civil and environmental engineering, the

academy also recognizes its alumns who have become an outstand-ing and recognized leader and achieved distinction in a field other than civil or environmental engineering. Academy members are outstanding and recognized academicians, scientists, or researchers in civil or environmental engineering or another field.

Academy candidates are leaders in their communities or business and have achieved outstanding success. They are active in professional or career organizations, recipients of honors in their profession, active in the community. Many are known by their involvement in public service, service organizations, and/or charitable causes, or are lecturers or writers on subjects related to their chosen field.

The academy is evidence of the success available to current stu-dents. By recognizing these well-decorated alumni, the Civil and Environmental Engineering department will help the university achieve national prominence in civil or environmental engineering education and strengthen students’ understanding of the engineer-ing profession through the personal and professional example of their predecessors. The academy will be a distinguished group of alums to provide expert advisory guidance and counsel to the department, faculty, and students and advance the objectives of the development program.

Alum Working on International Initiatives

The Academy of Distinguished Civil & Environmental Engineers

2011 InducteesCharles Beyer (BSCE ’72, MCE ’77) President, Beyer Construction, LLP

The Honorable Bill Callegari (MSCE ’72) House Representative, District 132

David A. Eastwood, P.E., C.A.P.M. (BSCE ’77, MSCE ’78) President of Geotech Engineering and Testing

William Fendley, P.E. (BSCE ’71) Board member, Cobb, Fendley, & Associates, Inc.

Jesse Gonzalez, P.E. (BSCE ’69) Co-Owner, The Gonzalez Group Former Chairman of the Board, SpawGlass

Rafael Ortega, P.E. (BSCE ’81) Vice President of Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam

Arup SenGupta, Ph.D., P.E. (MSEnvE ’82, PhD EnvE ’84) P.C. Rossin Professor, Lehigh University

Steven Simmons, P.E. (BSCE ’81) Deputy Executive Director, TxDOT

Daniel Wong, Ph.D., P.E. (BSCE ’83, MSCE ’85, PhD CE ’88) CEO of Tolunay-Wong Engineers, Inc.

Alireza “Alex” Ghodsi

Anan Al-Bahish

American Concrete Institute, Houston Chapter

Clyde N. Barfield, Jr.

David M. Barton

Dr. Abdeldjeli Belarbi

Bruce Alan Carmichael

Ruben A. Cheng

Billy M. Cooke

Gerald M. Diaz

David Duerr

Exxon Mobil Corporation

Herbert A. Feldt

Harold J. Gillespie

Sharon Giordano

Gonzalez Group, LP

Arturo Reyes Guerrero

Dr. Thomas T. C. Hsu

Douglas A. Kirkpatrick

Klotz Associates, Inc.

Herbert Lum

Dr. Mouhamad Y. Mansour

Ken E. Moore

Than-Nhi Thi Nguyen

Sean Nolan

Jerilyne Busse O’Neill

Rafael Ortega

Ravindra M. Perera

Permaform

Sonia M. Rocha

Eric Rosenblum

Aaron K. Schindewolf

Dr. Arup K. SenGupta

St. Nicholas Foundation

Standard Cement Materials Inc.

Patrick Peter Steffanelli

Kenneth E. Tand

Texas Association of Environmental Professionals

The Ivanhoe Foundation

Bobbi S. Treacy

Edward Allen Turner

Joseph Albert Ward, Jr.

XS Environmental Consulting, LLC

David Joshua Zettlemoyer

Donor Roll Call

10 blueprint University of Houston | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering 11

I’d like to support the UH Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering!

Name:

Day Phone:

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Enclosed is my gift of $ Please make checks payable to University of Houston

Please charge my gift of $ to my:

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Billing Address:

City: State: ZIP:

Acct #: Exp. Date:

My gift will be matched by: (name of matching company) )

To check if your employer matches gifts, visit matchinggifts.com/uh

Please use my gift for:

Chair’s Fund (HC1746ORN) Scholarship Fund (HC10854RN)

Dean’s Excellence Fund (HC12320RA)

Other CEE Needs:

Return to: Russell Dunlavy Senior Director of Development UH Cullen College of Engineering E421 Engineering Bldg 2 Houston, TX 77204-4007 713-743-4209 rtdunlavy@uh.edu

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

Department of Civil & Environmental EngineeringUH Cullen College of EngineeringN107 Engineering Building 1Houston, Texas 77204-4003

0073019482

AEBBI

Gifts to UH Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering help fund much-needed scholarships for our students, help us renovate our labs and facilities to be competitive with other Tier-One programs, and help us support the activities of our student organizations. Thank you for continually helping us meet these needs!

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